On my desk: Courage and Consequence

posted at 2:00 pm on March 7, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

Or almost on my desk, anyway. Karl Rove’s long-awaited memoir of his White House career, Courage and Consequence hits the bookshelves on Tuesday. Rove has quite a rollout planned for it. He’ll have a Ustream launch at noon ET, which I’ll embed earlier in the morning. After that, Rove will join me on The Ed Morrissey Show to discuss the book, following Andrew Malcolm’s appearance, which begins at 3 pm ET.

It’s already generating some of the histrionics and nastiness we saw from the media during the Bush administration. Dana Milbank today lets his wit run, or rather crawl:

As a White House reporter during the Bush presidency, I often worried that I wasn’t getting the whole story. Now, Karl Rove has finally given it to me.

His new book, “Courage and Consequence,” promises to “pull back the curtain on my journey to the White House and my years there.” What he divulges nearly made me choke on a pretzel.

That business about President George W. Bush misleading the nation about Iraq? Didn’t happen. “Did Bush lie us into war? Absolutely not,” Rove writes.

Condoning torture? Wrong! “The president never authorized torture. He did just the opposite.”

Foot-dragging on global warming? Au contraire. “He was aggressive and smart on this front.”

I’ve written dozens if not hundreds of blog posts refuting these claims, but we’ll save that for Rove on Tuesday. (Getting bad intel is not the same as lying, Democrats made the same WMD claims from 1998 forward, waterboarding as performed by the CIA is arguably not torture and Congress didn’t object to it as such at the time, and Bush reduced carbon emissions in the US more than Europe did.) Meanwhile, Hot Air readers can get a jump on sales by placing orders now!

Dems like to say that Bush lied about the WMDs because they think it lets them off the hook for voting to go to war. Bottom line is regardless of whether or not we found/find WMDs, our troops were able to free Iraq from the rule of a vicious tyrant who was hung for him crimes, and now we have an ally in the Middle East. I’d say that was a huge accomplishment, one the left doesn’t want to acknowledge. Good for Rove for setting the record straight, but many will still won’t listen, including Mr. President. I miss the grownups in the Bush administration.

I enjoy how Rove pushes so many buttons on the left and I think he was extremely effective as a political maestro, but the Bush-Rove domestic agenda damaged the GOP, the perception of conservatism and the economy. Personally, I wish Cheney had been Bush’s “brain” instead of Rove.

Having read enough of Democratic Underground, and listened to movie and TV celebrities talk about George Bush, to get the “real story,” I’ll be interested to hear how Rove coped with President Bush being high on cocaine and booze all the time, or how the President found time to listen to every phone call between Janeane Garafolo and her grandmother, or go over the master list of all Sean Penn’s book purchases? He must not have had a spare moment. /s

OT: Sebelius and Hoyer admit they might not make Easter deadline with Obamacare.

Wethal on March 7, 2010 at 2:07 PM

(stifles yawn)

Isn’t this one of those “evergreen” headlines? You know, dust ’em off, insert another holiday, and trot it out to Drudge. Like, “Sebelius and Hoyer admit they might not make EasterMaydayFourth of JulyLabor DayHallowe’en Thanksgiving deadline with Obamacare.”

Ed, Be sure to ask Rove whose brilliance it was that decided to repeatedly ram the decidedly unpalatable amnesty down their voting base’s throat.

While Conservatives and many Republicans were unhappy about many things Bush did, Bush’s repeated hard pushes for the Mexican government’s illegal aliens and his refusal to listen to those who brought him to the Presidency, was the issue that most destroyed Bush’s approval on the right.

(Getting bad intel is not the same as lying, Democrats made the same WMD claims from 1998 forward, waterboarding as performed by the CIA is arguably not torture and Congress didn’t object to it as such at the time, and Bush reduced carbon emissions in the US more than Europe did.)

Ed, ED………

You’re trying to use FACTS with these people.

……You gotta stop doing that.

(Oh, and I love the righteous indignation they still have about Bush’s supposed abuses of terrorist prisoners when, um……Obama’s kept all the Bush policies in place. And even gone out of his way to try to hand over bad guys to Pakistan. Isn’t that *gasp*…..RENDITION?)

I hope Karl does some book signings in and around NYC. Even if you don’t like some of Bush’s spending policies I think overall he was a good Pres, and Karl has a lot to do with getting him there and helping him along.

Isn’t this one of those “evergreen” headlines? You know, dust ‘em off, insert another holiday, and trot it out to Drudge. Like, “Sebelius and Hoyer admit they might not make Easter Mayday Fourth of July Labor Day Hallowe’en Thanksgiving deadline with Obamacare.”

VoyskaPVO on March 7, 2010 at 3:28 PM

Supposedly it was Obama’s now-or-never “Waterloo” deadline. For real. but no doubt he’ll be pushing it right up to 1/3/11, when the GOP takes over the House.

Of course you are right. But many of us heard so much savaging of W that any restoration of his legacy would be welcome.

I will not mention the usual apoplexy which the subject of the Bush years causes among Libs.

Heck, I had blue nosed WASPS speak his name like a curse, Quakers wish he would be shipped to Gitmo, nerdy Marxists complain about his spending, Jews think he was too hawkish in the mideast….and one woman who blamed him for the ninth ward mess who didn’t know WHICH STATE New Orleans wa in!

And I heard suffering wished on him and his family that I wouldn’t wish on The One for any reason.

I would go on a tangent about meeting a guy who did Federal Reconstruction Aid in N. O. but my posts are too long and too frequent.

Rove should keep a low profile and just let sleeping dogs lay. Just when I am about ready to start waxing nostalgic about Bush [Obama has that effect on me], someone comes around and reminds me of all I didn’t like about him.